My proudest moment in the yell-free challenge

I am quite overdue for an update on my yell-free challenge.  Well it is not yell-free so far.  Actually I yell once a day most of the time.  Still once a day is not bad considering before and my yelling is less angry and terrifying than before.

In these 4 months I have learnt a lot and I have found a lot of inner wisdom that had been dormant.  I have learnt to question myself before reacting and that is all quite amazing in such a short time. I have found love and support online and I am also seeing the beauty of it through my kids and that is my proudest moment.

I have learnt that my main triggers for anger are:

1. tiredness - my BIGGEST trigger
2. thinking of doing something and not managing due to kids wanting my attention
3. fear
4. stress

I am caring more for myself to eliminate being tired and so my biggest trigger of all.  But it is not quite easy to do so.  However I have found a lot of ways to help me and especially informing my kids that I am feeling tired right now and my patience is low and to please bear with me.

Finding ways and learning how my kids react to certain situations has helped me to be creative in diffusing anger and fights by tickling, running after them, being funny and exaggerating a problem.  If my child is insisting on a behaviour I calming but firmly look in the eye and say that this is not acceptable.

And there are a lot of other things really but I would never end this post if I list them all :)

But my proudest moment as I said is seeing my kids reacting to positive discipline and I cannot not mention these!

My son who has been resisting the change (and has the most baggage) has made leaps and bounds and so when he starts getting angry he tries to diffuse the anger in him by moving around and taking deep breaths.  When he sees me getting angry he finds ways to make me smile again and diffuse my own anger.  He is expressing his feelings that little bit more (even if always the negative so far).

Both kids are being more obedient and loving and caring and its lovely hearing them interact between them, trying to compromise, making up and sharing.

Maya still refuses to clean up and when she is in a mood she would not let me talk to her, touch her or do anything so trying to find out another way of helping her process these feelings that come up.  When Greg on the other hand sees to be more black than ever I schedule a meltdown for him and he is happier and more relaxed after.  I still tend to go towards threatening at times but it is getting better as well.

I see the many small victories I did or rather we did and can't help but feel a deep gratitude for the yell-free challenge group, orange rhino and also the author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids who made this journey finally a reality after 4 years of struggles.

I see these victories and am excited to see how it will evolve in another 4 months and if by than I will truly be yell-free.